Jump Aero announces new Advisory Board as it develops an eVTOL aircraft for first responders

Jump Aero, the Cal­i­for­nia-based start­up build­ing an eVTOL air­craft for emer­gency first respon­ders, has appoint­ed a Board of Advi­sors con­sist­ing of pro­fes­sion­als with exper­tise in mul­ti­ple sec­tors — includ­ing Aero­space Design and Emer­gency Med­ical Ser­vices (EMS).

The eight-strong team, which also has years of expe­ri­ence in Embed­ded Soft­ware, Entre­pre­neur­ship and Finance, will inform the Jump Aero strat­e­gy regard­ing first respon­der needs, busi­ness strat­e­gy, and elec­tric avi­a­tion, to accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of the company’s inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy to help save lives.

Carl Diet­rich, Founder & Pres­i­dent of Jump Aero, said: “The for­ma­tion of a world-class board of advi­sors is a key step in de-risk­ing Jump Aero’s invest­ment into the use of eVTOL air­craft for first response appli­ca­tions.

“With the advice of indus­try experts, we can advance our strate­gic plans with con­fi­dence to ensure that Jump Aero will be a leader in this rapid­ly emerg­ing mar­ket. I look for­ward to learn­ing from our advis­ers to accel­er­ate the growth of our ven­ture.”

Advi­so­ry Board mem­bers include TJ Kennedy, co-founder and prin­ci­pal of the Pub­lic Safe­ty Net­work and for­mer pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Flight and Crit­i­cal Care Para­medics (IAFCCP), Dr. Swathi Nadind­la, prac­tic­ing emer­gency physi­cian in the Bay area and Steve Tuck­er, founder of Swim­met­ric — a start­up devel­op­ing wear­able tech­nol­o­gy to pro­vide real-time per­for­mance feed­back to swin­ners using iner­tial and acoustic sen­sors. He is also an expert in embed­ded sys­tems.

Rex Alexan­der is a for­mer heli­copter air ambu­lance pilot and region­al direc­tor, in addi­tion to being a for­mer pres­i­dent of the Nation­al EMS Pilots Asso­ci­a­tion and the Indi­ana Asso­ci­a­tion of Air Med­ical Ser­vices. He is also the Co-Founder and Pres­i­dent of Five-Alpha, a con­sul­tan­cy pro­vid­ing ser­vices in heli­copter and pow­ered ver­ti­cal lift infra­struc­ture, heli­copter air ambu­lance oper­a­tions and organ/tissue dona­tion and trans­plan­ta­tion.

John Ever­lone is a nation­al­ly licenced para­medic with more than 30 years’ expe­ri­ence in the EMS sec­tor, while Kris­ten Bar­tok Touw is an entre­pre­neur and investor at AF Cap­i­tal Part­ners, as well as Man­ag­ing Direc­tor at Air­Fi­nance and Air­Fi­nance Ven­tures.

Peter Shan­non is an entre­pre­neur and ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist at Radius Cap­i­tal, which focus­es on trans­porta­tion tech­nolo­gies and has a cur­rent focus on advanced aer­i­al mobil­i­ty and its appli­ca­tions toward pos­i­tive impact for trans­porta­tion across the econ­o­my.

The final Board mem­ber is Zachary Lover­ing, CEO and Founder of Aera Air­craft, which focus­es on deliv­er­ing low-cost, all-elec­tric com­muter air­craft.

Jump Aero’s mis­sion is to lever­age eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy to enable first respon­ders to fly to the scene of an emer­gency as fast as pos­si­ble. Its launch prod­uct aims to safe­ly trans­port them to the scene of an emer­gency at top speeds of 200mph, and land safe­ly in an urbanised envi­ron­ment.

As well as Diet­rich, Jump Aero’s oth­er Co-Founders are Jeff Myjak, who is head of fab­ri­ca­tion, Kate­ri­na Bar­ilow, head of busi­ness devel­op­ment, and Anna Diet­rich, direc­tor.

Myjak is Pres­i­dent of Still Water Design, which man­u­fac­tures approx­i­mate­ly one hun­dred high per­for­mance com­pos­ite boats per year, while Kate­ri­na has exten­sive expe­ri­ence in avi­a­tion, struc­tured asset-backed finance, and cor­po­rate strat­e­gy.

Anna Diet­rich served as Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer and act­ing CFO at Ter­rafu­gia from its found­ing in 2006 until 2014, and is cur­rent­ly Co-Exec­u­tive Direc­tor at the Com­mu­ni­ty Air Mobil­i­ty Ini­tia­tive (CAMI) — where she cre­ates the pol­i­cy and reg­u­la­to­ry land­scape for urban air mobil­i­ty and eVTOL air­craft.

Com­ment­ing on the for­ma­tion of the Advi­so­ry Board, Bar­tok Touw added: “I am excit­ed to part­ner with expe­ri­enced entre­pre­neurs like Carl, Jeff, and Kate­ri­na. There are few peo­ple who under­stand the new eVTOL cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process in greater depth than the Jump Aero team.

“The approach is both tech­ni­cal­ly and strate­gi­cal­ly advanced, a rare com­bi­na­tion. Jump Aero’s val­ue propo­si­tion around emer­gency med­ical response is com­pelling from a life-sav­ing per­spec­tive, but also with regards to long term med­ical care cost reduc­tions.”

Any first respon­der organ­i­sa­tions with an inter­est in learn­ing more about Jump Aero’s life sav­ing tech­nol­o­gy, can con­tact them through its web­site, www.jumpaero.com.